John Brown's Raid to Start Our Civil War

[Mitch86]

Tomorrow, October 16, is the anniversary of John Brown's raid on the Southern Confederacy. That raid kicked off the US Civil War over slavery. It's hard to believe but at that time our Southern states had the "peculiar institution" of SLAVERY. 6 million African blacks were imported by our southern states to be slaves of our cotton planters. Lots of Americans, North and South, died in that war and our then President, Abraham Lincoln, was assassinated because of what he did to free our slaves.

He raided the Harper Ferry armory.

 

[Warrigal]

Tell me more about John Brown. I only know his name from the song "John Brown's body lies a-mouldering in his grave".

Ah, I see you have said that he raided the Harper Ferry armory. Thanks. I will look that up.

 

[Llynn]

He made the raid on Harper's Ferry hoping to steal arms stored there with the idea of iniating a massive slave revolt. When he was hanged, they made him sit on his coffin while a wagon transported him and his coffin to the gallows.

 

[dusty]

The Civil War was based on States Rights.

 

[Aunt Bea]

The Civil War was about much more than the morality of slavery.

The wealthy and powerful bankers, investors, factory owners, and politicians in the North felt that slavery gave southern plantation owners an unfair economic advantage and that eventually the power and wealth of the North would shift to the South as southern plantation owners were able to invest in mills and factories of their own to process cheap southern cotton instead of sending it North.

The powerful elite in the North were more than happy to step back into the shadows and fund the religious groups and abolitionists that took up the challenge to abolish slavery.

The change in focus from money/greed to human rights proved to be a much more powerful and widely accepted way to accomplish what they had set out to do.

I’m in no way condoning slavery or the stain of slavery on America’s past. I’m just saying that there is always more than meets the eye, two sides to every coin, etc…